I ran my hand down the side of the nylon backpack. I had expected that such an expensive object would have come in a container less expendable, but then I realized that would just attract undue attention. ZIP The sound marked the moment of its unsealing, low and behold in it was a STAL-Core, chambered in bullets specially designed to pierce fully sealed power armour, it was too bulky to fit in his hand and its ammunition load made the gun too heavy for any unenhanced human to use practically. Fortunately, its clip was empty so no one would be firing it today. However, tomorrow was a different matter entirely, but by then it wouldn’t be his problem anymore. It was startling to know that this was technically classified as a submachine gun, and perfectly able to fire 5 rounds before you could blink.
Its stark white colour glistened in the sun, its barrel painted black while its insides were hidden by the circular smoothness. Its corporate logo was emblazoned on the grip, outlined with silver which shone with an unnatural amount of reflectiveness. STAL had a simple logo, a human skull biting a knife, showing great similarity to the pirate flags of old.
I smiled, sitting at the end of the pier, in a lake, surrounded by an artificially planted forest filled with spruce trees barely 20 years old, on a shitty little backwater corporate world technically under the jurisdiction of the European Union, I had on my lap my ticket to true human civilization.
—
Standing behind the auditorium curtains while a bald man speaks to an auditorium, the seats house a number close to 200 students. His speech is long and drawn out, as most ceremony speeches are.
“As I conclude my speech, I would like to welcome to the podium our valedictorian, Monica Abella!” Monica, who was standing next to me behind the curtains, walks out into the light first, her red hair done in a ponytail waving to the clapping audience. The man turns to her, cracking a smile as he shakes her hand, after which he retreats into the background, while Monica takes the spotlight at the podium.
The speech prepared and rehearsed by the school probably weren’t on the papers she brought with her. The usual congratulations and salutations to the graduating class were lost in a sea of similar ones all across union space.
“My fellow students, our school year is over, we’ve all worked hard for this, and I expect that we will do the same in the future in whatever opportunities await you all!” She looked down at the podium and caught a breath before continuing. “But today is more than just a celebration… I wonder if our difficulties all those years of studying were really just that, difficulties.”
I stared dead-eyed at her, this wasn’t going to make my speech easier by any stretch but it would make the ceremony at least a little bit more exciting. It would be good for her resume though, European universities often look for progressive types, especially those that show it on camera.
“A lotta you today have probably not heard about this topic, it’s not something our leaders want you to know about, so I’ll do you a favor and bring it to your attention today.” Her voice changed to a more assertive tone. “As I speak the system of Othore has been under attack! And no, its not another xenophobic coalition war, or a superpower border conflict. But something the government is far more hesitant to talk about.”
“Othore is an unclaimed system currently home to a war between two corps. You might have heard of them, Sibir Industries and the Anhui Conglomerate are both companies known for their expertise on developing human colonies, emphasis on the Human part.”
It wasn’t particularly uncommon for corporations to fight over planets to develop, especially if it was still in the bidding process. I knew what she meant by the human part, it was an inevitability that on at least a handful of the habitable planets we had conquered that there would be a few primitive sapients that occupied it first.
The official policy of the European Union was to settle the planet without disturbing the natural development of the species, and welcoming them if they survived long enough to become spacefaring. But enough corporations had ‘mishandled’ the process with weapons to make the list of extinct primitive species at the hands of humanity at least half a page long.
“The Othorians are a humanoid species living on a world where the warmest temperature is 5 degrees celsius. They look not unlike the mythological yetis of old and their fur protects from the winds which are a constant 30km/h. The most important feature of the species is their intelligence, as of this year the Othorians are in the gunpowder age, they build hunting rifles, fireworks and great cities with wood from trees 5 meters in diameter.” She paused to catch her breath and let the audience visualize the creatures, before continuing on with her speech with newfound vigor . “They have every advantage on their world, yet they are dying in droves, caught in the crossfire of weapons centuries ahead of their time. Railguns, fighters and power armor that punch with the weight of a few tons, how have they acquired these weapons you may ask? The European Union has a vested interest in the wellbeing of Sibir, killing sapients to pad their own pockets, because another city burnt raises their bottom line by a tenth of a percent.”
The speech did make me think, she let the audience draw their own comparisons with our own origins, I myself thought of musketeers forming a firing line against hovertanks. Her gaze turned spiteful, the government was never the most trustworthy organization, fueling the audience's distrust for them with her critique of its realpolitik.
“The Anhui have their own backers, the People's Republic of China pits their dogs against ours in the hopes that they can have the opportunity to steal a world which rightfully belongs to those younger than us. So before you go today, I would like to ask of you today to support the Othorians fight for freedom, write to your representative, donate to a charity, as it is our job as a sophisticated spacefaring species, to uplift the natives not destroy them”
She threw her graduation cap down, and walked off the stage. The teachers looked on unmoved, as all the bountiful graduation ceremonies made them numb to the speeches, even preachy ones such as this one. Nothing would happen to the governor-general's daughter of course, the video would be online in a few minutes and add to her portfolio, she’d be seen as an activist, perhaps grabbing the attention of a university. No such luck for the rest of us, universities rarely look this far out of the inner colonies, you’d need something or someone exceptional to grab their attention and with the travel costs that high you’d need a full scholarship to make it off this rock. She never cared of course, she never brought it up outside of this time, she never donated to the charity drives our school would host, nor display anything but disgust at aliens in general.
Me? I was a salutatorian, I still needed to make a speech, but the contents wouldn’t matter like hers did, to the education boards in the core valedictorian is the only title that matters. I started to walk onto stage, the crowd still shocked by Monica’s ‘outburst’, some were probably moved, and I spoke.
“Good morning , my name is Tobias Pierce and I am salutatorian of the class 2804.” I didn’t speak as passionately as the last speaker, as the subject matter wasn’t really up to par in terms of fervor. “I come here today to give you all congratulations for a job well done, and as the valedictorian said, we’ve all worked hard for this.”
I never looked up from the podium to where I placed my speech in writing, what was the point? Everyone wanted to just get this over with, and this speech was made awkward by the previous presenter.
“I don’t doubt that we will see each other again, I know many of you have plans on staying on this humble planet.” Humble was an egregious understatement, since Delores was a mostly barren planet that hosted small creatures and bacteria before it was leased to VINGT, the corporation currently running our planets development plan. Doing a great job at planting a few trees, and releasing a few bees to promote plant growth, but failing to build anything deemed non essential to the colony such as entertainment, fortunately they also forgot to pay for a content blocker concerning illegal movie sites, which made 123Movies.de017 the go-to site among frontier worlds like mine. “I hope that we will be able to find fortune in the paths we follow in the future, goodbye.”
They all politely clapped as I did a little wave before I left the podium, not because of admiration, since my speech wasn’t particularly interesting. I disappeared behind the curtain while the principal regained the stage, Monica was long gone, and I wouldn’t stick around and ruin the authenticity of a dramatic exit. I started leaving before I could hear the principal speak again, it was the same speech they always gave. In the 700 years since the European Union was fully federalized, I don't think a graduation congratulation speech changed once. The words differed a bit person to person but it was still the same thing,, were all common phrases used in these kinds of speeches from the subterranean habitats of Kantera all the way to the cloud cities of Venus.
Using my keycard on the gate outside the school's main campus, it opened to reveal the outside world. I was free of all of that now, the hilariously unoriginal speeches, the long hours of studying to meet the less than ultimate prize of salutatorian. I’d be wrong to say I’d miss the place, but I’d also be wrong to say I didn’t value the experience. I turned around one last time to look at the place which defined the last 19 (well actually 4) years of my life, prying my eyes away as I headed to the nearest mag station.
—
The door to my house was an antique, it was probably the most valuable piece of furniture my parents owned. It was a comparatively plain wooden piece only bearing a trim around the edges as well as a small carving depicting Jupiter and 4 of its moons. Which you could only tell was Jupiter from a small circular mark on the wood that was redder than the wood surrounding it. However it was not the decorations that gave it a rich history but rather the material. It was made of authentic Alpha Centaurian wood, the first extrasolar colony and the only core world still exporting lumber. It was inherited from my grandmother, who died and handed it down to my father, who took it with him on the colony ship to where it stood today. When I was young I never understood why my parents didn’t sell it, but then when I grew older I realized it wasn’t exactly in mint condition and the local pawn shop usually gave price ranges in the ballpark of 20-50 ‘ro, far below its worth out here.
Opening my door I was greeted with the same old travesty of an apartment my family lived in. Things only able to be classified as stuff were strewn about everywhere, exactly the state I and my family had left it in You see, my family didn’t throw things out, they always had reasons to keep the things they owned. For example an old mid 28th century stationary computer, always seen as a ‘backup’ to our DIVE devices, even when the screen was cracked beyond repair by a stray high heel in an argument between my parents. To which they promptly switched to ‘maybe we can sell the parts to someone’, I questioned and still question if somebody was stupid enough to buy computer parts from 50 years ago, so they redirected the conversation to how it would be an antique 50 years from now.
“Mom! I’m home!” She was probably in her room, fully immersed into her DIVE device as usual, I don’t blame her, she needs a distraction from being cooped up in these depressing surroundings. “On the off chance you’re coherent, I will be in my room”
Opening the door to my bedroom, it was a stark contrast to the rest of the house, kept relatively organized apart from the boxes of things that my parents decided to dump me with. It was boring, a nightstand with a few books piled, a bed with a steel frame as well as a clothes rack like the ones found in the school drama department. I heaved myself onto my bed and breathed a sigh of relief, the long night, the great trial, the perfidious challenge of getting an A in the Iberian-Franco language course was over. Stretching my body while still lying prone, luxuriating on my bed, I was dismayed to hear an unsolicited notification from my DIVE device. It was a cheap one compared to its peers at school, and its notification sound was equally as brutish, a cacophony of various band instruments designed to solicit the most amount of attention out of a user as it possibly could. I snatched it up and put it on, wanting to see who dared disturb my rest. I am perfectly honest when I say I didn’t expect any messages today, especially since it was graduation night. It was my friend Lukas Almsfield, I say friend very lightly. I was enough of a friend with him that he did invite me to large gatherings from time to time, but I never felt comfortable (or brave) enough with him to do the same.
“Hey Tobias, so I’ve got a graduation party going on at my place. I'd appreciate it if you came, it starts at 7pm today at my place. I've got the house to myself, costumes encouraged.” . It was the fact that it was a graduation party that surprised me. Those kinds of parties generally fell out of fashion on this planet a few decades after planetfall. Corporations usually restrict the amount of alcohol and other things essential to a party on a developing world. I think about saying no, spending the rest of the day lounging around in my room, perhaps playing something pirated from the internet. But somehow that didn’t seem like the appropriate action from a student who just graduated, the appropriate action should be along the lines of ‘talk with friends’, ‘get wasted’ and have ‘fun’ in general. It didn’t help that most of my ‘friends’ would be at that party as well, he didn’t really have many friends in the traditional sense, more acquaintances he knew well, never feeling truly at home with them, regardless of how they felt towards him.
“Sure, I’ll turn up,” he typed it out, I considered adding an exclamation mark, then felt as if it looked desperate, I knew it was just me overthinking things but I kept it out nonetheless.
Putting down my phone, I shot up out of the bed and walked over to the clothes rack and sifted through the clothes I had acquired over the years. Half of them were meant to fit him two years ago and the other half didn’t exactly display the latest fashions. The only option in my mind was a costume, but what to wear? An impressive impersonation of a person from the 2700s could be achieved, but I didn’t feel like explaining to people he was wearing a costume.
Bursting out of my room I searched the various dumps of discarded accessories, in the piles of old clothes was a wealth of forgotten things, perhaps something resembling a costume could be salvaged. I fished something out. An old hat with a flat brim surrounding a cylinder rising out the middle, if he’d had to guess the last time this was in fashion was the 2600s. But only with the aristocratic types of the commonwealth, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was first dreamt up in the first industrial revolution, it would have made a good costume, if I had more sophisticated clothes to go with it, so I tossed it aside.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The next thing I pulled out was an interesting sight, an old filter mask. It had one large lens with 2 large filters resting attached to the respirator jutting out. Quite surprising since most companies did away with them after the advent of membrane skin rendering it obsolete. Then I remembered my father had an old job working at a synthread tailor, where they must have been cheap enough to purchase surplus gear instead of anything newer, unprocessed synthread was not kind towards unprotected skin. I rummaged some more, trying to find the old chemical suit that came with it. I didn’t need to look very far, dad must have thrown them into the same pile after walking home from that particular tailor closing down. Its gray material was still untattered from the years of neglect, in surprisingly pristine condition, I paired them together, it was a perfectly adequate costume, turns out hoarding something did some good.
—
Lukas’s house was a bit bigger than my apartment, only by a factor of about 4 or 5 times my apartment's grandiose 200 meters squared. It was clear that his parents had a few ranks above my father in the corporate ladder, his house wasn’t one of those apartments incorporated into a brutalist skyscraper fully made of concrete. But an actual house with a front garden with faux grass and one or two real flowers. The path to the front door was black marble all the way, with white limestone classical style pillars holding up the overhanging roof, itself a sloped roof overhang outlined with the same material as the floor. The door itself was modern, a blank white slab, the button next to it activated the doorbell, he rang.
A tall browned haired man with a clear spherical helmet answered the door, he was dressed in what looked like a chrome suit of armour, complete with leather joints which looked almost medieval in its aesthetic. His hands and feet were outfitted with white gloves and boots. I don’t think it was synthread that made up the material, they looked almost like rubber in how they reacted to his movement. His eyes were dark brown, though were overshadowed by his large eyebrows, accompanied by a pointed nose, his face was an oval in appearance and his curly hair was put to the side to leave his forehead in open view.
“Hey Toby, glad you came”, he opened the door fully and granted me a full view of the party inside, turns out I came early, only about 3 people were there, and his place wasn’t looking like the aftermath of a Kanasman raid yet. He looked me up and down before speaking. “Nice costume!, 5 hours out of school and you’re already working minimum wage at a mustard gas plant.”
“Scrapped a costume together at home, my dad used to work for a cheap synthread tailor”, I said, matching his jovial tone.
“He liked the aesthetic? I had to pay double the price to ship a 10 ‘ro poster from Neujon he OR she’s not just cheap”
“Probably took it with him setting up here, probably too stingy to make his workers work easier, made them work for every part of the barely above minimum wage salary.”, I joked, he chuckled before continuing.
“Still looks really good, I was scared you weren’t gonna show up”
“Yours does too Lukas, never really seen someone do something that different before, now may I ask why you are dressed as a polished aluminium foil ball”
“I saw some of the suit concepts we had when we were first trying to put something up into orbit”, he looked down at the ‘breastplate’ of his suit, beating his chest lightly. “lemme tell you, 1950s engineers really fancied chrome”
“Radar must be having a field day with you”, New planets still used radar as the cheapest option, they tended to be replaced around the 70 year mark with more sophisticated methods.
“You’re absolutely right, as we speak anti-aircraft missiles are on their way to our position”, he stretched his arms out to his side, imitating a panicked tone with the remark. “Come inside, you’re early but the rest are lazy bastards so will come in an half an hour or two”
Stepping inside his house was surreal, I had never been to his house, only on a few outings, I looked around the house as I followed him through the hallway, a living room on the left containing a large monitor, with a speaker system to match, a few pieces of modern art that looked like a strange assortment of strings and small sticks, suitably placed on modern clean, precise, block shaped furniture. But my jaw dropped when I saw the stairs, I knew Lukas was rich, but not floating spiral staircase rich. Rectangular limestone blocks floated in place, moving rhythmically up and down slightly to grant a mystical quality, locking position when someone chose to walk up to the next floor.
“You like those?”, eyeing my staring with a smile plastered on his face. “My parents had them installed august last year, corporate gave them out in a lottery to upper management”
“Congratulations on being the proud owners of one of three of those planetside”, putting on my best presenter voice. “you’re now on the same level as the governor-general”
“Well my parents always did think that rank was associated with house value”, he stretched his arms behind his back, taking on a sarcastic tone. “Ahhhhh, feels so good to be better than everyone else”
We strutted over to the group of three already there, standing in a circle in the corner of the room next to a small dresser on which stood some drinks, a punch bowl and a delicate looking cloth to be put under that all, they themselves holding cups indicating they had already plundered some of the alcohol in their vicinity. The blonde haired one standing to the left was dressed flamboyantly, a pink shirt and red pants accompanied by a coat that looked like the latest fashion trend in the East African Hegemony, the one thing topping it all off being the round orange sunglasses. The black guy in the middle was dressed in something that more resembled a costume, adorning a olive green military style uniform with a red collar, the cap with the red star he wore meant he was probably disguised as someone from the PRC. The final person on the right was probably the most creative, dressing up as a large can of bleach with holes cut out for the arms and head, though it wasn’t directly scaled and was less wide presumably so he could actually move.
“Hello friends”, he put his hand on my back. “Let me introduce you to our classes esteemed salutatorian, Tobias”
They turned around to look at me, eyeing me up and down, and extended their hands one by one to shake my hand, to which I complied. The detergent bottle opened his mouth to say something.
“The one dressed like an average Vaszon art student is Thomas, the Staltan is Pierre and the bleach bottle is me who also goes by the name Ali. Care to partake in the punch bowl? Purely non alcoholic I assure you”, taking on a sarcastic anglo noble accent while giving me a wink.
“Sure, what do we have?”, his eyes wandering to the dresser.
“We have the holy trinity, beer, tequila and most importantly vodka”, he says as he leans on the dresser, “For the more sophisticated kind though we have an alcoholic punch bowl and for some godforsaken reason absinthe, why we have absinthe I cannot say”
“Thanks, I’ll just take a beer for now”, the vodka and tequila didn’t appeal to me just yet, and drinking the green mystery liquid definitely didn’t sit right with me, especially as my previous experience with alcohol including 2 cans of 10% alcohol content.
“Alright then I guess”, looking slightly disappointed he hands me a can of something branded Franziskaner Weissbier. “Feel free to join us in the corner later, Lukas want some?”
“Tequila please, I don’t think anyone wants to get too wasted on the vodka yet, and please don’t spike my drink.” We laughed as Ali smirked and gave him a glass of the brownish liquid. “You guys hear the news?”
“What news?” Pierre finally spoke.
“Rumors abound that the caliphate is gearing up for another jihad” Eyes widened and eyebrows were raised at the remark, I hadn’t been paying much attention to the interstellar rumor mill lately, due to the exams and the excitement of graduation, so it was news to me. “The preachers keep including incendiary remarks in their speeches and they’ve been upping their navy budget these past few years”
“Who do you think they’re fighting?”, Pierre says as he takes another sip from the glass cup.
“They haven’t really been particularly hostile to anyone recently, and I’ve never heard of any border disputes they have with their neighbors.” He strokes his chin and looks up at the ceiling. “I think it's against one of the aliens in the Northern Rim, I’d bet it's the ones with the triangle feet and the vestigial eyes, those don’t go down too well with the religious types. They’re also about a century behind us in terms of tech so the jihadists can kick their ass with the cheap power armor they probably got from a 7-11.”
“I don’t think the religious people even have an alien race they don’t despise,” Pierre said quickly.
“My dad shares their opinion”, Thomas loudly intervened. “And frankly I do too, why should we make room for them on the galactic stage when even the younger xenos give us nothing but disrespect, I fully support the turks cutting them down to size”
“Didn’t know you were a xenophobe”, Ali spoke, looking at him with a confused and slightly troubled expression. “I also don’t remember the last time someone under 80 years old used the word ‘xeno’.”
“I mean, the older ones are at least a little bit deserving of our respect but they still talk to us like we’re just out the crib and the younger ones constantly act like we’re trying to strangle them in the crib so how else am I supposed to react other than apathy or resentfulness”
“I read somewhere that it was because around 70% of all aliens are much more collectivist than humans”, I voiced, trying to let people know I was still somewhat part of the conversation. “Makes them hate organisms that don’t look like them a lot more, the older ones outgrow that mindset but still have their head so far up their own asses that they talk to us like we’re just learning the alphabet.”
“You’re right I guess.” Thomas answered dejectedly, seeming less interested in the conversation. I couldn’t help but think it was my fault for going on a bit too long, ending the discussion there and leaving nothing for people to add on to the discussion. The front doorbell rang abruptly, making me instinctively freeze in surprise.
“I better get to that, see you guys in a bit”, Lukas said, pointing to the entrance before he jogged over to the door.
“I’ll go check out the rest of the party” I lied, I just wanted to get myself out of an awkward moment.
I fled to a different room on the other side of the party, the dining room was decorated extravagantly in stark contrast to the living room. A large baroque table made room for 6 chairs all around it while a crystal chandelier encrusted with fake diamonds hung above it all, an entire wall was transparent, dedicated to a view in the backyard containing self-sustaining flowers, all the while having 2 very expensive looking paintings stationary at the head of the table. I leant on the doorways side for a bit, watching the partygoers enter. I recognized most of them from school, still no sight of my friends though, but I guessed it was more due to the fact that they weren’t part of this particular friend group than anything malicious. One by one the party transformed into a cacophony of sound, music blaring, people talking, arguing even. It was strange really, being surrounded by so many people yet I couldn’t summon up the courage to do anything other than periodically take some beer. I went to the living room to grab myself another can when I heard someone say something behind me.
“How’s our school's esteemed salutatorian” To my left stood a woman in a red dress, she stood with one hand on her hip and another holding a glass with a clear liquid swirling inside, leaning on her right leg more than the other one. It didn’t take much for me to recognize the valedictorian, her face still burnt into my head from the awards ceremony. “I almost couldn’t see it was you because the whole malnourished PRC lithium miner getup”
“I’m doing good thank you” I struggled to bring words to my head, still dumbfounded by the sudden encounter, I hadn’t expected to ever see Monica again after the ceremony.
“You never seemed like the type to go to parties…” She smiled at the end of her sentence, my impression was that she had attained a mastery of the art of passive aggressiveness, she wasn’t entirely wrong. I didn’t go to many large gatherings in general, my birthdays tended to have a headcount of 3-4 and I’d only gone to one or two parties during my schooling. “What gives?”
“A friend invited me, what's your costume supposed to be?”
“I’m dressed as Monica Bella, Valedictorian of the class of 2804”, laying her chin on her free hand in the air.
“How original… How's the video doing?”
“You’d be surprised at how much an algorithm loves a video like this, sets me apart from the hundreds of other redneck backwater planet valedictorians.” She giggled. “I’ve already gotten a university invitation”
“Good for you then” I sighed. Which one?”
“Neuschleswig, I’m holding out for more though, I’m waiting to see if I get one from a colony that's past the 400 year mark.”She explained, it wasn't surprising to get one from Neuschlewsig, it was barely 175 years old in our stellar neighborhood, it would take a bit of time to attract the attention of older colonies. Her ambitions however surprised me a bit, 400 year mark schools were inner colonies, it would have been a much safer bet to gamble on a sub-sector capital university reaching out. “I’m a little surprised you didn’t have the idea first, you could have made it to at least made it offworld.”
“Well I do try to defy expectations”
“Clearly” She muttered, looking at my hand that was inching closer and closer to the beer can“Well I’m sure you have more important places to be and things to do, I’ll leave you to it. ”
She swiveled around and sauntered over to a group of girls, leaving me alone with the alcohol dresser, now would be a good time to try the vodka. I poured myself a glass of the vodka, noting that its contents were already a quarter of what it was since I had last observed it, trudging over to Lukas’s kitchen and leant on the counter.
What do I want to do with my life? I couldn’t go to a good college that was for certain, I could try and climb the ranks of corporate but that would take years or I could go down the route of a menial worker that my parents had found fascinating, the result of which could be seen by the state of my house. I started thinking about what went wrong, the struggle to achieve the vaunted title of valedictorian, my inability to do enough extracurricular activities due to time constraints, how my part time job chafed with my academic aspirations. Lost in deep thought I barely noticed a man leaning against the counter next to me until he spoke, pulling me back into reality.
“The Almsfields do well for themselves don’t they?” The man noted. “I doubt anyone but the governor-general and his accountant have this many kitchen knives”
“I guess they do,” I replied. “The floating staircase should be enough evidence for that.”
“That it is,” The man said. “Do I have the pleasure of speaking to the salutatorian of the class of 2804?”
“You do” I responded, taking a slight sip of the vodka, I recoiled slightly, I hadn’t expected the burning sensation from the taste.
“Careful, that's 45% alcohol, who’s your designated driver? Might be a bit too much to walk home from” He cautioned, I had the feeling something was off about this encounter, the man did seem less interested in making conversation and more in asking questions.
“Well I have a strong constitution” I stammered. “But even this will get me hammered, as is my intention”
“Is it because you’re not getting into college?” The mood turned sour at the mention of college, I turned my head to look him up and down, he wasn’t dressed in any type of costume I could recognize. His disheveled hair was balck and his eyes were brown, his nose had a bandaid on it like he was recovering from a broken nose. He had a muscular build, like he’d been on the school football team, but I went to every game and he wasn't in any of the positions I recognized.
“Who says I wanted to?”
“Don’t kick the shit with me Tobias, you fought tooth and nail for valedictorian and it was snatched away from you, on any other world that would be fine, but you knew the only title that mattered on a frontier world was.” He poked his finger at my chest. “I saw you look at talking to that Monica girl a minute ago, you looked like a wounded dog when you heard about her university application.”
“So why don’t you leave me here to rot in peace” I grumbled angrily. “You come here to gloat?”
“Because I think both of us can help each other” That piqued my curiosity, so I turned my body to fully face him. “You see, I need someone to do something for me, something that's high risk, high reward; a VERY high reward. I need someone who’s smart enough to know what he’s doing but not spoiled enough like the rest of these posh pricks are. And also; you’re poor.”
The guy looked shady, check, he’s saying it's high risk but he’s offering lots of money, check, he’s asking someone from not a well-off family and he knows my background so he researched this beforehand, check. Why he was asking for someone who was smart, I couldn’t know, but the rest of the evidence was clear. I deduce with a high probability that this man is going to ask me to do something illegal.
“One question though; who the fuck are you?” I said in a call voice, I raised my eyebrow at him, lifting the glass to my lips to take another sip, slowly growing accustomed to the burning liquid.
“I’m not gonna give you my name if that’s what you want” He said, chortling a bit as he points at his chest. “All that matters is that I’m your ticket off this rock.”
I weighed the pros and cons in my head, the pros are that I get money, the cons are I could go to jail. The question is; do I throw away the promise of a life in which I’d have to spend 20 year to pay off my parents debt in a dark office in the cities central spire, or do I commit something illegal and win big or lose it all and spend a questionable amount of time in the colony prison.
Well, it couldn’t hurt to hear him out, and on the off chance he was one of the private security contractors the colony has to keep the peace, which I highly doubted due to the fact that they were the cheapest option corporate could have chosen, they couldn’t arrest me for planning illegal activities.
“Alright, I guess I’ll hear you out”
“Now you’re talking,” He gleefully expressed. “See you tomorrow 4pm at the boardwalk, the one near Amselweg station, my associate will be wearing a red crown.”
He pats my back roughly as he gets up from the counter, leaving me alone with my drinks. First I felt a little surprised, expecting him to brief me on my mission on the spot until I remembered where I was. Any extended conversation about crime would ring alarm bells for at least one person in the party. Second of all it dawned upon me as I looked at the drink, that I might have to hitch a ride with someone else’s designated driver.